WinFS is a Database Platform

Samuel Druker the Microsoft Development Lead for WinFS speaks on Channel 9 in video and in the threads about how WinFS will mean much more than simply full-text searching. (via Philipp Lenssen)

Quotes from Samuel regarding WinFS differences with respect to the current crop of Personal Search Tools:

“X1 (and enfish and lookout) do the job for full-text search on the stuff they know about in the particular application they support. However, WinFS is a database platform. As I said in the other video, it’s a storage platform. Developers write new apps, those apps use schemas to describe the user’s data and rely on the system repository to hold those items. Full-text search is just one thing that you can build on that. Much more important, IMO, is what the database guys call query and relations.”

“As for Quicksilver, I can’t stress the non-comparison enough. WinFS is a development platform for persistent storage. It is not just a search tool for files, it is not just a relational database shoehorned into an OS. It is a full-fledged platform component.”